Essays
1094 results
Page 93
Why Ted Kennedy was special
A Kennedy we could relate to
Unlike his brothers, Ted Kennedy was deeply flawed. But those flaws enabled him to identify with the rest of us, and we with him.
Essays
1 minute read
Behind the Bicentennial: A memoir (Part 1)
Selling Philadelphia, 1976: Behind the Bicentennial
Washington wanted to cross the Delaware. Max Bialystock wanted to climb back on top of Broadway. In the early '70s an unwieldy committee of Philadelphia's usual suspects faced a more daunting challenge: winning approval from the Paris-based Bureau of International Expositions for a Grade 1 international exposition.
Essays
5 minute read
In Woodstock's wake: a 1970 memoir
Post-Woodstock memories: A drag with my daughter, 1970
A year after Woodstock, I took my 12-year-old daughter to “Michigan's Woodstock”— the ultimate generation-gap test for a young assistant professor trying very hard to be “with it.”
Essays
2 minute read
A shipboard casino for Philadelphia
The lady or the casinos? Why not choose both?
Is casino gambling in Philadelphia an either-or proposition? Not necessarily, if in the process a dazzling ocean liner can be rescued from the scrap heap. All it takes is a little imagination— and less money than the developers plan to spend on their ugly black-box facilities.
Essays
4 minute read
Death and the boxer
A predictable requiem: Why boxers risk death
Three more boxers died in July. To be sure, death does occur in a sport of avoiding and taking hard punches. But boxing can also be a sport of purity and beauty, and boxers are willing to take the ultimate risks to approach those levels.
Essays
8 minute read
Becoming a writer, c. 1964 (Part 4)
Becoming a writer, c. 1964 (Part 4): The devil (i.e., law school) beckons
Unlucky in love, I relished my emerging hoodlum persona. Trouble is, I wasn't writing. And my relatives (and the draft) were pressuring me to go to law school. Was I master of my fate, or its victim?
A writer and her audience
What makes a good book?
Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone could be a writer. The problem, says recent author Reed Stevens, is that most would-be writers don't understand that writing is a two-way process.
Essays
4 minute read
"Napoléon' at the National Constitution Center
The emperor rides again
Was NapoleÓ³n a great figure of history, a power-hungry tyrant, or just a model of pointless hyperactivity? The National Constitution Center facilitates the debate with some 300 artifacts, skillfully woven together to trace the rise and fall of an enigmatic figure whose contradictory qualities continue to both inspire and repulse us.
Essays
6 minute read
Basketball: The real thing
Life lessons on a basketball court
These guys playing pickup basketball are no professionals. Why, then, do I find them so much more fun to watch?
Essays
1 minute read
How I became a writer, c. 1962 (Part 3)
Becoming a writer, c. 1962: A new world opens up
At Brandeis I was not very good with girls. And my grades as a politics major seemed likely to jeopardize my chances for law school. I seemed to lack the self-confidence to succeed at anything. But then I took a couple of risks and things started to fall into place.